Office manager suspected of stealing from construction company

A Goodlettsville construction company has learned the hard way how important it is to do background checks on your employees.

Since March, an employee stole more than $10,000 from them, and what's worse is that there's no telling how many more victims may be out there.

On paper Kim Snyder seemed perfectly suited to manage the office for Timberline Construction. And business owner Cody Rothwell was actually friends with one of her references.

"She was diligent, she did her work, she was a very quiet person. She kind of kept to herself. Looking back now, on the sneaky side," Rothwell said.

A week ago, cracks began to surface in Snyder's hard-working image when Rothwell's wife discovered thousands of dollars worth of charges to Lowe's hardware that didn't add up.

"She was charging up all kinds of items, from gas cards to AT&T cell phones, clothing stores, food stores. You name it. The restaurants, she hit them," Rothwell said.

This allegedly wasn't Snyder's first brush with the law. In fact, she's still on probation for theft at another construction company in Nashville. What's even more bizarre, some of the money she allegedly took from Timberline went toward paying her first victim back.

"That was when I really got the wind kicked out of me, when I started processing that, 'Wow, you really got one over on me,'" Rothwell said.

His next call was to Goodlettsville police, who arrested Snyder on Wednesday for felony theft.

"She said she had no idea why she was doing it, that she couldn't help herself. She was just doing it," said Goodlettsville police Detective Stanley Hilgadiack. "She said, 'Whatever you say I did, I probably did it, and I don't remember it or know why I did it.'"

Rothwell says this is the first time he's ever hired anyone without doing a background check. When he contacted Snyder's references, one of them said she had taken money from him as well.